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Battle Zone (1998)
Battle Zone was a game with a worms-style gameplay. It appeared on Andrew Gowers' original games site, Cunning and Devious Games. It was removed when Jagex was founded. It has not yet had an official remake however the FunOrb game Arcanists is very similar. It is unlikely it will be remade for a long time because of this reason. Arcanists would be too similar to any remake so Jagex wouldn't want to make a game that seems almost identical to another game. Even if Arcanists wasn't around they still probably wouldn't remake due to the fact it featured on Cunning and Devious Games and Jagex seem to have moved on from that. The only reason Vertigo and RuneScape were remade was because they had been remade on the Jagex site which Jagex is still making remakes from. Description Its Description read: Battlezone is my highly acclaimed worms style game! On this page you can download the full version, the source code, see some screenshots, read the reviews or see the instructions! ''- Magically has all the elements the made worms so addictive in the first place - 82% - Atari computing'' ''- It's addictive, pure and simple - 100% - ST+ diskmag'' ''- Battle Zone is a resounding success - 82% - Maggie diskmag'' Instructions The instructions read: Battle Zone ----------- By Cunning And Devious Games Copyright 1996 Programming, Music and SFX: Andrew Gower Graphics: Andrew Gower and Ian Gower Introduction Battle Zone is a 2 player strategy/skill game. Each player controls an army of worms, the aim being to use the various weapons at your disposal to wipe out your opponent. You can either play a friend, or against the computer. Starting A Game Once Battle Zone has loaded you will be presented with the title screen, press any key to jump to the main menu. Here you can choose 1 of 3 options. These are: Single Match - Starts a match between 2 armies of your choice. Playing against a friend is much better than playing the computer. The computer intelligence works best on the random landscapes, and the 'food' landscape. Tournament - You can select from 3-10 Teams of worms. The computer will then decide which team plays which. Winning teams move to the next round, and play each other to find the champions of the tournament. Edit Teams - Allows you to edit the team names and members. You will be presented with a list of all the teams, select a team, and enter the new names as prompted. It is possible to save the modified teams to disk. Select then choose one of the slots from 1-10. Next time you play Battle Zone, click on edit teams, followed by and the slot number, to load your teams into memory. Playing A Match Once you have chosen your teams you will be asked which landscape you wish to fight across. You can either choose one of the predrawn landscapes from disk, or ask the computer to randomly generate a new landscape. After a short pause whilst the landscape is generated or loaded you will be taken to the main game. The game is turn based, each worm takes it in turn to move, with worms being selected from each players team alternately. If you lose a worm however you will get less turns per round, as that worm will no longer get a turn. The screen will scroll to centre your first worm on the screen. You can move it around be using the left and right cursor keys to move, and the spacebar to jump. Be careful not to walk off the edge or bottom, as if you do your worm will die. All objects on the screen act as obstacles. There is no background scenery which you can walk over, so if two objects overlap slightly they behave as if they were just one object with the combined outline of the two. Next you need to try and damage an opponent's worm. The teams are colour coded. Worms on 1 team have Red numbers above their name, the other team has yellow numbers. These numbers represent the worm's remaining health. It is a good idea to go for a worm which isn't very secure if there is one, (For example, on a very small island), as you may be able to blast it off the edge of the screen, and kill it. Once you have decided which worm you want to attack you need to choose from one of the 14 skills detailed below to do it, you can perform one action a turn, control than passes to the next worm. Bazooka: Select the first box on the bottom control panel to select a bazooka. Press the right mouse button to arm the weapon, and a cross hairs should appear on the screen. Your worm will always try to shoot through this. Try moving the mouse pointer around to see how it affects the cross hairs position. Once you have the angle you wish to fire the shell at, click and hold the left mouse button. The longer you hold it down the more power the shell will be launched with. Your power can be seen in the box at the top right of the control panel. When you release the button the shell will be fired. It won't necessarily go straight to your mouse pointer though, as it will be pulled down by gravity, and blown by the wind. (Wind strength is indicated in the box in the bottom right of the control panel, by a brown line). When the shell hits the landscape, a small part will be blown away, and any worms nearby injured. Make sure you use enough power so that the firing worm is not injured by his own weapon! Rocket: Similar to a bazooka except it homes in on it's target. Before arming the weapon, click where you wish the rocket to aim for. Cross hairs will appear to indicate the target. Next, arm the rocket and fire it using the same procedure as for bazookas. It is a good idea to shoot rockets up into the air, with plenty of power, and then let them home in on the target on their own, as this makes them less likely to hit the surrounding scenery before getting there. Grenade: Also similar to a bazooka, grenades however bounce before exploding making them harder to aim. To compensate for this they do more damage, and are effective further away from the explosion. Grenade's aren't affected by wind either. Cluster Bomb: Similar to a grenade, except when it explodes, it fires out 5 shells in random directions, which then damage anything they hit. Dynamite: Move your worm to where you wish to drop the dynamite. (Normally on top of an enemy worm). Then click the left mouse button anywhere on the main screen. Now run away quickly! The dynamite explodes shortly after being dropped, damaging any worms nearby. Air Strike: Air strikes can't be used until all the worms have had at least 1 go, as they are very powerful, and this allows the worms the chance to move to some cover to protect them. To use an air strike click on the screen where you wish to target the attack. An aeroplane will fly across the top of the screen, and drop bombs on the target. If there is anything above however, the bombs will hit this, so worms can hide under overhangs in the scenery to some extent. The bombs drift left slightly, so if the target is very low on the screen, allow for this by clicking slightly to its right instead. Teleport: If your worm is stuck on an island, or wants to move to a more strategic position that can't be reached on foot (or tail?), you may wish to teleport it to a new location. Simply click on the screen where you wish to go, and if there's anything there to land on, you will be teleported. Fire Punch: Move your worm so he is facing another worm, and click anywhere on the main screen. The other worm will be knocked into the air in the direction your worms is facing by the punch. This will not damage it, but if the worm is standing on a cliff, you may be able to knock it off the edge of the screen killing it. Tunnel: Click the right mouse button; crosshairs will appear indicating which way you wish to tunnel. Move it to the correct direction, and click the left mouse button. The worm will begin to dig in the selected direction. If there is nothing in front of the tunnelling worm it will stop. Be careful when tunnelling downwards not to tunnel right through the ground, and off the bottom of the screen. Girders: When you move the mouse on to the screen you will see a girder underneath the mouse pointer. Move the girder where you wish to place it, you can rotate it with the right mouse button. To place it on the screen click the left mouse button, and it will contribute to the scenery. Girders can be used as bridges or placed above the worm, as cover from incoming shots. Note: Girders cannot be placed too close to any worm. If you cannot put a girder on, try moving it away from any nearby worms. Machine Gun: A short range weapon, useful for finishing enemy worms off. Click the right mouse button to arm the weapon, then click where you wish to shoot at. The target must be near to your worm, and there must not be any other scenery in the way. With a machine gun you get 2 shots, and the firing worm cannot be injured as a result of nearby blasts. (It might be blown back slightly however.) Kamikaze: Face your worm in the direction you wish to attack, and click the left mouse button. The worm will fly across the screen in a horizontal line doing considerable damage. Any worm it hits will instantly lose 80 health. If the worm encounters scenery it will fly through it for a short distance leaving a tunnel behind, before exploding. The only disadvantage of kamikaze is that the worm doing it dies as a result, useful if a worm is nearly dead. Plasma Gun: Similar to machine gun, except it can fire straight through scenery which is in the way. You only get 1 shot however. Skip Turn: If none of the above weaponary suits, you can always skip your turn, by selecting skip turn, and then clicking anywhere on the main screen. Limited Weaponary You will notice that when you select a weapon, the name will be displayed above the control panel, followed by a number in brackets. This is the number you have remaining have. Once you run out, you can't use that weapon any more. Game Over The match will end when one of the teams has been completely destroyed. You will be displayed a screen showing who won. It also tells you which worm was best, which was worst, which was more violent, and which was most picked on. Press any key to return to the title screen, or play the next match in a tournament. Pre-drawn landscapes On the disk there are several predrawn landscapes for you to play across. It is also possible to draw your own. To do this you need to draw three screens with your favourite art package, and save them in Degas uncompressed format (PI1). These screens need to link together horizontally to make up the landscape. To save disk space they can be compressed with Atomik afterwards if you wish. To make sure your landscape looks right you will need to use the correct colour palette. The colour palette is as follows: Colour Red Green Blue Colour Red Green Blue 0 0 0 0 8 6 6 6 1 2 2 2 9 5 5 5 2 0 4 0 10 4 3 2 4 4 2 0 11 3 3 3 5 3 1 0 12 7 4 0 6 2 0 0 13 0 3 0 7 6 0 0 14 0 2 2 Don't use colour 3. When you have finished drawing your picture, colour 15 should be used to fill in all the areas which the worms can walk on. Once you have drawn your pictures, copy them on to a blank disk. Next they need to be renamed so the program can find them. Rename the first picture to 1.pi1, the second picture to 2.pi1, and the third picture to 3.pi1, where '' ''is the name of your landscape (Maximum length 7 letters). Load the game like normal, then insert your picture disk when the title screen appears. When you start a match the program will automatically detect the new landscape, and it will appear on the landscape selection menu. Gameplay footage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DENYSG77_sw Category:Old Jagex Software